Jonathan Nasaw - Fear itself

Missy decided to handle this situation the same way-sort of. She crawled out of bed, pulled the covers back up over Ganny’s accident, and left the room to give Ganny a chance to clean herself up in private.

But when Missy returned to the bedroom, after what seemed to her to be a very long time-long enough to polish off a six-pack of little powdered doughnuts-Ganny still hadn’t moved. Quietly-somehow Missy understood she was in the presence of something solemn, though she wasn’t quite sure what-she walked around the side of the bed and saw that one side of Ganny’s face, the side she was lying on, was black and swollen, and that although Ganny’s eyes were open, she wasn’t looking out from inside them.

Horrified, fascinated, not quite ready to let herself understand yet, Missy edged a little closer and saw that Ganny’s slightly parted lips were crisscrossed with cobweb-thin threads of cottony white dried spittle, as if little fairies had been trying to sew them back together.

“Poor Ganny,” she said, as softly as she could-Simon was always telling Missy that she talked too loud. She knew she had to do something-but what? She couldn’t call the police even though she knew how to dial 911: Simon had drummed it into her head that if the police ever came to the house, they would end up taking her away from him or him away from her, and in either event, she was bound to end up in an institution for the feeble-minded.

Feebleminded: that was the exact word he used, every time he gave her the speech, and Missy had come to fear the speech so much that she’d often be crying by the time he got to “in either event.” Then he’d stop, and dry her eyes, and promise to always be there for her, and she in turn would promise him that she’d never, ever call the police.

Nine-one-one was out, then. But she wasn’t supposed to talk to strangers, either. At times like this, there was only one person Missy could turn to-only one person she was allowed to turn to: Simon.

The first thing to do was get dressed. No, undressed first. Missy stripped off her jammies, then dumped the contents of her valise onto the sofa bed. Picking out undies was easy-they were all white and the label went in the back. Socks were also easy-it didn’t matter what foot you put them on, so long as you picked out two of the same color.

As for pants and shirt, Missy knew you had to match them with the weather if you were going outside that day. With some difficulty she managed to unbolt the kitchen door, then stepped out into Ganny’s sunlit backyard wearing only her socks and panties, and felt the warmth of the autumn sunshine on her bare skin. Shorts and T-shirt weather for sure-sunglasses, too.

Always grateful for a chance to wear her sunglasses-which not only were pretty, with thick pink rims and lenses shaped like sideways teardrops, but hid her eyes so strangers couldn’t tell right off that she was a Downser (or so she sometimes thought)-Missy padded back inside, leaving the door open. She picked out a pair of plaid Bermuda shorts and a Special Olympics T-shirt from the pile on the sofa bed and took them back into the kitchen so she could look at the flowers in Ganny’s garden while she finished dressing. There were purple morning glories climbing the back fence, glowing in the sunlight, and golden sunflowers taller than Missy, just starting to go to seed.

It took a few tries to get her Deedees-white Adidas cross-trainers-on the correct feet, with the tongues pulled up smooth instead of crumpled and the Velcro straps tight but not too tight. When she had finished, she slung her pink plastic purse that matched her sunglasses over her arm, picked up Tweety’s cage, and left the house via the front door, grim-faced and determined.

“You stay here, Ganny,” she called on her way out. “I’ll go get Simon.”

Alluring as she’d been in the late afternoon, Pebble Beach was somehow even more bewitching in the early morning, with the fog drifting in wisps and tatters across moss-green fairways glistening with dew. And as if to make up to Pender for her behavior the day before-or perhaps, beautiful bitch that she was, just to keep him on the hook a little longer-she showered him with favors. The damp air kept his booming drives from flying too far, the breeze blowing in from the bay kept them dry, and the dewy greens saved more than one overmuscled putt from slipping past the hole and rolling all the way to Maui.

The fog burned off a little before ten, leaving the sky a fresh-scrubbed blue. Pender stepped up to the eighteenth tee shooting eighty-four, laid up right, reached the green in three, and twoputted for a glorious, unashamed bogey: he’d broken ninety.

After their round, and an elegant lunch at Roy’s, over in Spanish Bay-a Kobe beef carpaccio carved so exquisitely thin that the slices were almost transparent-Pender and Dolitz repaired to their two-bedroom suite at the Lodge. Naptime for Sid; time to get down to business for Pender. His first call was to Linda Abruzzi.

“Linda, it’s Pender.”

“Hi, Ed-how’s the vacation going?”

“Good, pretty good. Weather’s great-and I broke ninety at Pebble this morning.”

“Is that good?”

“It is if your handicap’s higher than the drinking age.”

“Have you talked to Dorie Bell yet?”

“At her house last night.”

“MDF?”

“Negative on that-I think this one’s for real.” He started to lay out the plan of action he’d sketched in for Dorie last night.

Linda interrupted him to explain about Maheu and the bank records.

“What an extraordinary asshole,” said Pender when she’d finished. “Let me try to get in touch with McDougal. Liaison Support’s been his baby from the beginning-maybe he’ll let us have this one last hurrah.”

“I haven’t had my first hurrah yet,” said Linda.

“Yeah, well, stick with me, kid.”

Pender’s next call was to McDougal’s office. He was informed that the deputy director would be in conference all afternoon-with Agents Driver, Woods, Irons, and Putter, Pender suspected. He left a message, then phoned Dorie, who wasn’t there either.

“It’s Ed Pender,” he told her machine. Not “Agent Pender”-he had made up his mind to ask her out. “Give me a ring as soon as you can.”

He left her his room number at the Lodge along with his cell phone number. By the time he’d finished, the jet lag he’d been trying to ignore all day finally caught up with him. Quick nap, he promised himself, climbing into bed in his boxers and sleeveless wife-beater strap undershirt, and while waiting for sleep to overtake him, he thought about Dorie Bell. Smart, funny, doing her best to get through a hard time, but constitutionally incapable of cruising in neutral. Handsome woman, too, even with that busted nose. Not to mention that certain something in the way she moved.

Simon Childs retired to his bedroom at dawn. Exhausted as he was from the evening’s exertions, he knew that sleep would not come easily. It never had: he’d been a fretful baby and a restless toddler even before his mother’s departure, and a full-blown insomniac afterward. His sleep disorder manifested in both multiple dyssomnias-difficulty falling asleep, difficulty staying asleep-and parasomnias-night terrors and somnambulism. Medications helped: a triurnal rotation of chloral hydrate, Seconal, and Nembutal prescribed by his grandfather’s tame physicians had seen him through adolescence, while as an adult he’d kept up with every pharmacological advance, legal or otherwise.

His current favorite was Halwane, an experimental, short-acting benzodiazepine that had not yet been approved for the marketplace. Simon had learned about it on the Net, where it was nicknamed Halloween, and convinced his doctor to put him on the protocol, promising to eschew all other drugs for the three months of the FDA-monitored trial. He’d had no intention of keeping his promise, but the drug more than kept its promise: fifteen minutes, then bam, you were out; three hours later, bam, you were awake.